1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention relates to database systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for managing a database.
2. Description of the Related Technology
As the use of the Internet has become more and more popular, various database systems have been developed to track information that is associated with each of the users at an Internet site. These database systems can store demographic information, a list of user preferences, or other information about each of the users of a particular site.
One problem that has been encountered by these database systems is that it is time consuming to access and search the data once it has been accumulated. Often, database systems consist of millions of items of data which are permanently stored on a mass storage medium. However, not all of the data is “fresh”, or, in other words, relate to current activity of the user. Therefore, various trash management systems have been developed to eliminate old or non-useful data from the database system. One system that has attempted to solve trash management is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,121,495 to Nemes. Nemes uses a hashing scheme whereby each of the data records in a database has an expiration date. Once a data record has expired, the Nemes system removes the record from the database. However, the Nemes system fails once database is completely full with unexpired data.
Another problem that has been identified is that many databases are designed such that information on one page references information on another one of the pages. This often occurs in tree, chain, or indirect systems. In these systems, if one page is successfully written and an attempt to write a dependent page fails, a corruption is introduced into the database.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that is efficient in handling large numbers of transactions. Furthermore, there is a need for a system that does not introduce interdependencies between each of the pages of the database. Thus, if one of the pages is contaminated, the other pages remain unaffected by the contamination.